Dinah, ClinkShrink, & Roy produce Shrink Rap: a blog by Psychiatrists for Psychiatrists. A place to talk; no one has to listen.
All patient vignettes are confabulated; the psychiatrists, however, are mostly real.
--Topics include psychotherapy, humor, depression, bipolar, anxiety, schizophrenia, medications, ethics, psychopharmacology, forensic and correctional psychiatry, psychology, mental health, chocolate, and emotional support ducks. Don't ask. (It's not Shrink Wrap.)

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I found it an amazing story, and one case in which brain surgery for a condition, seems justified. Is this surgery familiar to all of you in the psychiatric community? Would this same surgery work for curing hoarders, obsessive cleaners, etc. My sister is a hoarder, though having unsuccessful back surgery and being mostly confined to a hospital bed and wheel chair that she can't wheel seems to have reduced the areas affected by her hoarding if not the desire to hoard. Another friend is obsessive about house cleaning to the extent that she goes into the bathroom after guests to clean and towel dry the sink that has been used for hand washing, and perhaps to clean the toilet as well. Both of them would have really different lives if they did not have the problem.

The idea of brain surgery is interesting but as someone who lives with a person with severe OCD who is fearful of the meds (a common reaction and often very reasonable one amongst many people with various forms of MI), I cannot imagine this individual consenting to surgery under any circumstance, no matter how distressing or damaging the illness.I do not have OCD. If surgery could take away bipolar and all its friends, I would do it. I know that for people with OCD, it might be impossible to consider so I am not sure how many people it will help.

Ann, if you click on the empty space, the play button pops up. Otherwise, you can go to the original link at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/476/what-doesnt-kill-youThe mental health segment is at 36 minutes.

I don't know if this is that relevant but I was so disturbed by this I had to stop it prematurely. They give you this warning that an upcoming part may be graphic or some such warning. When it came to that part I was like "OK, OK, it's not THAT bad." (It was pretty bad, but my mind was saying "I can take it. I've heard disturbing things before." My body felt differently and I got nauseasous, clammy and felt like I was going to faint and had to lie down. This has NEVER happened before and there are no other precipitating factors. I don't know if that tapped into my feelings of having been really ill and psychotic and convinced something bad would happen or if it was just imagining vividly the insults to her body.